Mormons begin and end every meeting with a prayer. They’re generally routine and uninspiring, but sometimes you hear something beautiful and heartfelt.
But they rarely ever pray with each other in an unstructured setting.
You usually have to be told to pray. Otherwise it really wouldn’t occur to you.
The used to tell us to pray when we’d go visit each other on assignment. We would share a spiritual thought and then pray. If you were lucky, they’d ask you how you’re doing and pray over your problems. Super touching! That was mostly before my time, but I remember doing that when I was a young Mom, 18 years ago.
Now, the non-denominational church I attend has “prayer partners” after the service. If you need to pray together with someone, you can stay afterward and get some extra faith and love from someone. I walked out thinking how amazing that is, to actually pray for someone, together, with them.
“Oh yeah. It’s like what visiting and home teaching were like, a long time ago.”
(Why don’t we do that anymore? We lost the structure of such a wonderful program. More and more, people dropped off and wouldn’t participate. And now there’s no expectation of it happening at all.)
Another thing is Mormons don’t really understand healing prayers. At all. Like I’ve never heard a Mormon pray for healing.
They even claim to have the power to heal—in theory—but they never do it.
Instead, they will pray for the doctors to treat you correctly.
In my opinion, this is just uninspiring and totally overlooks the power Jesus promised to his disciples. It wastes an opportunity to practice real faith.
I’ve recently become acquainted with some people in a different Mormon branch (from the “succession crisis” after Joseph Smith’s martyrdom—so they’re not followers of Brigham Young). They openly pray for healing and experience other gifts, and it’s a frequent occurrence in their worship services. Just like a lot of Christians.
Weird that it’s so foreign to Mormons.
Once when I was a teenager, when I had skin picking OCD, I asked my neighbor to pray over my leprous-looking arm. She was a negro Baptist, I think. I knew they prayed differently; I knew it was part of their culture to pray for healing. I had the faith to ask her to pray over me. It was beautiful. (Yes, I got better. But I don’t remember the exact timing.)
It just feels like there’s more power when I hear Christians pray. They speak frankly and pour their heart out more. They praise God and speak of their confidence in him, and quote Bible verses about His power. Wow!
A few years ago, I was invited to join a group of homeschoooling LDS moms who would gather every month to share their problems and worries, and then pray over each person’s family specifically. Whoa. It was so amazing to see this little group within our homeschooling tribe — despite the church culture we had come from. It has really been a blessing for me to be a part of this group!
One thing I like at The Well where I go is that prayer can be given spontaneously anytime — in the middle of a sermon. That would never happen in the Mormon church. Routine, assigned prayers only. Nope, you’re not allowed to just feel like praying.
(And don’t you dare pray to Jesus either)
I like how Christians hold their hands up in a gesture of receiving or surrendering. Beautiful.
So anyway, I have picked up on praying more spontaneously.
I was on the phone with a lady who was sick and in pain, and I said “I’ll pray for you” (which usually means later — like if remember, I might mention you in my night prayer).
But then I caught myself and said, “Is it okay if I pray right now?” and I went ahead and prayed with her. She was so amazed. She said nobody has ever prayed for her before, with her listening.
But how powerful that is, to know their thoughts about you and feel their love as they advocate for you in Jesus’s name.
It’s really cool to do new things and share that with people.
I actually started praying more fervently for people back in 2015, I think. Instead of quickly saying words, I would pause and visualize the effect I wanted. I would meditate a bit on that person. Soon after doing this, the Lord led me to some resources to learn the art of healing.
I think when we are wiling to come to Him with genuine hearts, and get away from the mundane traditional things we’ve been taught, His power can really flow into our lives.
All I Possess 